Thoughts On The Dead

Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Author: Thoughts On The Dead (Page 125 of 1031)

Worst Prom Ever

August 2, 2019 / / 1 Comment

“I tried, Jerry. I really did. You know me: I wanna get along with everyone.”

“Don’t worry about it, man. Weir can be a little hard-headed. I remember one time we were out somewhere and he said, ‘Look at the baby squirrel.’ Except he was pointing at a fucking chipmunk. I tell him, ‘Weir, that’s a fucking chipmunk.’ Turns out he thought chipmunks grew up to be squirrels. So I set him right, but he refuses to accept it. I even took him to the zoo and had one of the animal ladies explain it to him, but he wouldn’t give in.”

“He’s steadfast in his beliefs.”

“You could put it that way, sure.”

“He said something about Hollywood. Has Bob tried acting?”

“Shit, man, he’s been going on auditions for eight years. He was real close to getting on Streets of San Francisco one time, but I don’t know if he’s cut out to be an actor. He can’t act, for one. That’s disqualifying on its own.”

“Hey, it’s not like I’m Olivier.”

“Weir’s worse. Trust me, man: I’ve run lines with him.”

“Well, there’s gotta be something he’s better at than me. Guitar, man! I can barely play.”

“Neither can he some nights. Do you fence?”

“Traffic in stolen goods, or fight with swords?”

“Either.”

“No.”

“Shit. Wait, man: is your daughter an Instagram Hottie? And, if so, how many followers does she have?”

“What the hell is Instagram?”

“It’s this thing from 30 years from now. There’s all kinds of artworks on it, and there’s chicks, too.”

“30 years from now? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh, right. Your band doesn’t have a time machine.”

“A time machine?”

“It’s a Sheath, technically.”

“I’m gonna see if I can find Sheila E.”

“Sure thing, Hue.”

The Giants Stadium Box Set: An FAQ

August 2, 2019 / / 4 Comments

Oh, has there been a new box set announced?

Yes, there has. It’s five shows from the venerable and now-gone Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

You can’t be any more specific than “in New Jersey?”

It was in a swamp in New Jersey. For purposes of taxation and postal service, the venue was technically in East Rutherford, but Giants Stadium wasn’t anywhere near East Rutherford. It was in a swamp and you could only get there via a superhighway.

A swamp?

They paved it.

Sure. Which shows?

One from ’87, two from ’89, and two from ’91 including the Dark Star Tease show.

Eyes opener, braj.

Eyes opener.

One small question. 

Anything for you, Boldy.

The picture you’ve posted is of the 9/2/78 show at Giants Stadium, which was the Dead’s first appearance at the venue and also a cash-grab before Egypt.

It is, yes.

You didn’t mention the ’78 when you listed the box set’s contents.

No, because the ’78 is not included in the new box set and DAVID LEMIEUX OWES ME AN EXPLANATION.

He doesn’t owe you anything except his best effort at archivisting.

I want an explanation and a letter of apology.

Didn’t the Dead have other dates at Giants Stadium beside the five on the box set and ’78?

The Grateful Dead visited the Meadowlands Sports Complex to play the big room eight more times after ’91.

So why aren’t you bitching about those shows not being included?

Because they sucked. It would be morally wrong to ask Deadheads to pay for those ’95 shows. Not as wrong as a $3,000 blanket with a Stealie slapped on it, but still wrong. The ’78 show was good, dammit.

Did David Lemieuxa’dib release a charmingly folksy video announcing the box set? Perhaps he explains the exclusion of the ’78 in that.

Perhaps!

Didn’t you watch it?

I did.

Were you fucking around on your phone the entire time David was speaking?

I was.

You’re a dillweed.

Granted.

[A TOTD SIDENOTE} Dave is too skinny. Canadians have usually begun to pack on their winter fat by this point. I fear DL is not catching enough salmon, and I blame this all on Climate Change.

Huey, Screwy, And Jewy

August 1, 2019 / / 0 Comments

“Bob, c’mon. We shouldn’t be fighting.”

“Huh. I wonder how an empty chair can sound so much like Hewis Lewis.”

“Huey isn’t short for Hewis, Bob.

“Oh, and now the chair is correcting me! Wow! What a smart, handsome. Hollywood-calling-back chair that must be!”

“SHUT! UP! GOYIM! I’m trying to hawk some merchandise here!”

“Sorry, Bill.”

“Sorry, Uncle Bobo.”

Thoughts On Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood (Spoilers)

July 31, 2019 / / 4 Comments
  • Once upon a time…there was a boy who liked movies, and feet, and the n-word.
  • His favorite movies were the shitty ones, the B pictures.
  • His preferred feet were white and dirty.
  • As for the n-word: he’d take that any way he could.
  • Now, that boy did know a great many things: how to write dialogue, and how to squeeze all the tension out of a scene, and where to put the camera.
  • “Where should I put the camera?” is a much tougher question than the layperson would assume, but that boy always knew the right answer, or at least knew how to hire someone who did.
  • One morning, the boy found a well.
  • The water was sweet, and–he was to find–profitable.
  • The water’s reviews were exceptional.
  • The bucket he drew was full of water of an historically alternate nature.
  • It gurgled and blipped and sloshed over the sides onto the ground, and, in the water’s murmurings, the boy heard it speak to him.
  • “What if the Jews won World War II?”
  • The boy drank deeply from the well.
  • Not too long later, the boy returned to the well.
  • Another bucket drawn.
  • What did it say this time?
  • “Hey, pal. What if the blacks won slavery?”
  • He slaked his thirst, and filled his greedy belly with the cool water.
  • Then he went back to the well for the third time.
  • Wells go dry after a while.
  • The bucket he drew was silty, and brackish, and not fit to potate.
  • And the boy said, “Oh, well. Third verse, same as the first.”
  • That, Enthusiasts, is the story of Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood.
  • Spoilers a-comin’.
  • …
  • …
  • …
  • Not kidding.
  • If you don’t wanna know how it ends, stop reading.
  • …
  • …
  • …
  • You have been advised, and now you’re consenting to spoilers.
  • Although you don’t need the warning.
  • You know what happens if you’re not a slapdick.
  • You find me a person who didn’t hear that Quentin Tarantino was making a film about the Manson Murders and say to themselves, “I bet movie stars are gonna defeat the Manson Family in an orgy of played-for-laughs ultraviolence,” and I’ll show you a slapdick.
  • Here’s the whole movie:
    • Leonardo DiCaprio has a giant head, and yells drunkenly quite a bit.
    • Brad Pitt may or may not be played by Robert Redford from Downhill Skier.
    • Margot Robbie’s feet are in it.
    • Los Angeles in 1969 has no black people in it whatsoever.
    • About two hours and fifty minutes of that bullshit.
    • Leo, Redford, feet, caucasity, Leo, Redford, feet, caucasity, repeat.
    • And then the movie stars defeat the Manson Family in an orgy of played-for-laughs ultraviolence.
    • There is also a mid-credits scene because we are all now existing in the Marvel Corporate Universe, and that’s the law.
  • That’s about it.
  • But you don’t get any of the other Quentin Tarantino stuff.
  • The hero you pull for?
  • The Jew hiding in plain sight in Occupied Paris, or the freed slave, or the ex-con flight attendant looking at a long and penniless retirement?
  • Nah.
  • OUAT…IH asked you to root for a fading actor, who only has Cadillac problems.
  • In fact, he’s literally got a Cadillac.
  • Oh, no, the rich asshole isn’t being quite as successful in his chosen field as he once was.
  • Heaven forfend.
  • Django rode for love.
  • The Bride was out for revenge.
  • Butch wanted his father’s watch back.
  • But Leonardo DiCaprio’s ego was bruised because he was forced–forced!–to star in Spaghetti Westerns instead of the major Hollywood releases he believed were his birthright.
  • So, you know: fuck him.
  • How about those scenes that sear themselves into your brain like a branding iron made of snappy dialogue and well-paced edits?
  • Hans Landa interrogating Monsieur LaPadite in the farmhouse.
  • You remember that shit.
  • Vincent Vega kneeling over the near-dead Mia Wallace, ready to stab her in the heart with a massive syringe of adrenaline.
  • You’ll NEVER forget that shit.
  • There are none of those scenes in OUAT…IH.
  • There’s a bit where Brad Pitt drives out to the Spahn Ranch and meets the Manson Family which was meant to be tense, but Lena Dunham is in it, and the only performance I will ever enjoy that Lena Dunham has a part in will be her funeral.
  • I don’t cotton to that filly.
  • Well, you’re thinking: that leaves the dialogue.
  • Conversations are confrontations in Tarantino flicks.
  • And, shit, the man’s got a way with a one-liner.
  • “All right, ramblers. Let’s get rambling.”
  • That’s from Reservoir Dogs, which came out in 1992.
  • I still say that shit.
  • None of those lines in OUAT…IH.
  • Margot Robbie certainly didn’t have any.
  • I think Robert Duvall has more lines in To Kill A Mockingbird than Margot Robbie did in this film.
  • She mostly just stands there and looks pretty and never wears shoes.
  • Which brings us to Quentin’s podophilia .
  • STOP IT, ASSHOLE.
  • I’m beginning to think that maybe Tarantino doesn’t have a foot fetish so much as he does a fetish for making us, the audience, complicit in his li’l-piggie worship.
  • He wants to be caught with the feet in his mouth.
  • “WATCH ME SHRIMP!” QT yells at another awkward press conference.
  • It’s enough.
  • And it’s not “thematic” or “an aesthetic choice” or any of that bullshit: feet give the fucker boners, and we’ve gotta look at his foot-boner.
  • If it’s not a sex thing, the why aren’t there any shots of dudes’ feet?
  • I rest my case.
  • There is also a child actor in this picture, and all child actors should be thrown into volcanoes.
  • Kids can’t fucking act.
  • You know who can act?
  • Margot Robbie.
  • But she has no lines, and the child has many.
  • World’s going to hell.
  • We must now discuss the ending: this is, as I alluded to, the third straight flick in which QT has created an alternate history in which the good guys won.
  • It does not work.
  • There should be little difference between this climactic sequence and the ones from Basterds or Django.
  • It should be more acceptable, not less.
  • The Nazis killed millions.
  • So did the American slave trade.
  • Manson Family only offed seven folks.
  • I can only quote Stalin to explain my discomfort: One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
  • Tex Watson stabbed Sharon Tate 16 times, and left his knife sticking out of her belly when he was finished.
  • She was eight months pregnant.
  • Four other people died that night on Cielo Drive.
  • One was a Folger.
  • You may have had her family’s coffee.
  • One was a guy who came up the canyon to hang out with his buddy, the property’s caretaker.
  • He got shot four times in the belly, and he bled out in the street.
  • Bummer trip, man.
  • Rewrite!
  • Here’s Quentin Tarantino with your happy ending.
  • Here he is with your Hollywood ending.
  • Brad Pitt beats two of the Family to death.
  • His dog disembowels Tex Watson.
  • And then Leo takes a flamethrower to the Manson Family.
  • The weapon was set up in the first act, which might make this the first known occurence of Chekhov’s Flamethrower.
  • It is at this point–the brandishing of the fire-spewing device–that I audibly told Quentin Tarantino to go fuck himself.
  • I know I was in Delray Beach, Florida, and he could not hear me in the Hollywood Hills or Malibu or wherever it is that he sucks toes.
  • I didn’t care: it needed to be said.
  • What was the statement here?
  • I’ve seen several articles arguing that the film is QT’s midlife crisis movie.
  • Aging in Hollywood: it’s a bitch, man.
  • Kiddies are nipping at your heels.
  • Knees are getting rusty.
  • And, sure, OUAT…IH was that movie, but it wasn’t entirely.
  • Y’know what I think it was about?
  • I think was OUAT…IH was about the fact that Quentin Tarantino thinks the Manson Family is cool.
  • And that Westerns are cool.
  • So he blended them up like the margaritas Brad and Leo guzzle during the flick, and there you go: the ninth movie from Quentin Tarantino.
  • My stomach is queasy, and not just from the popcorn, and so I will go lay down and be very quiet and perhaps I will watch no movies at all for a while.

Law & Order Has Gotten Weird

July 31, 2019 / / 7 Comments

“What about school, man?

“I did pretty good in school, Jerry.”

“Shit.”

“What the hell is up with your boy?”

“Bobby thinks you’re big timing him.”

“I’m not trying to!”

“Y’gotta understand: a lot of Weir’s identity is wrapped up in being the best-looking guy in the room. And most of the time, the other people in the room are the Grateful Dead. Usually, he’s competing with Mickey.”

“That’s not really a competition.”

“You get my point, then.”

“Whaddya want me to do about it, get in the car and pull a Montgomery Clift?”

“Oh, stop being so dramatic. We just gotta find something he’s better at than you. How much money you got?”

“I’ve written, like, nine #1 hits in the past five years.”

“Huh. How tall are you?”

“Six foot.”

“Nope. Is the rumor about your cock true?”

“If anything, that rumor undersells both my length and girth.”

“Shit. Maybe you should just avoid Weir at the show.”

“I’ll give it a try.”

Thoughts On The Democratic Debate Without Having Watched It

July 31, 2019 / / 1 Comment
  • Ooh, what fine podia.
  • Do they have to custom-make those?
  • Or is there a wholesaler?
  • Does the podium wholesaler also have lecterns in stock, or does he specialize?
  • No one called for a general strike.
  • Bunch of pussies.
  • Che would have called for a general strike.
  • Of course, that was his response to everything.
  • Someone steals his morning paper?
  • General strike.
  • No mojo sauce for the fried plantains?
  • General strike.
  • Commie Grandpa is closest to Che, I suppose, but I do not think Bernie would line political enemies and homosexuals up against a wall and shoot them.
  • He’s not that type of commie, or grandpa.
  • The man is not my pick for the nomination, but I can’t accuse him of that.
  • Now, Kamala Harris?
  • Kamala Harris would absolutely line motherfuckers along a brick wall and open up a mini-gun on them.
  • And she’d figure out a way for Caliburn International to make a profit from it.
  • Did Marianne Williamson reveal the Orb of Tinath’e?
  • Because she shouldn’t even know what the Orb is, let alone have possession of it.
  • The woman is not a trained sorceress; she got famous as a guest on Oprah.
  • You wouldn’t give Doctor fucking Phil the Doublet of Reticulation, would you?
  • Last time the Orb got into the hands of a ninny was 1582, and Pope Gregory had to magickally excise 11 days from October.
  • Cory Booker said to Pete Buttigieg, “We’ve got so much in common!”
  • And Pete said, “Oh, thank God, you’re finally coming out.”
  • Silence for a moment.
  • “I meant that we were both Rhodes Scholars who went on to become mayors of working-class cities.”
  • “Oh! Oh. Well, I didn’t mean–“
  • “I have a girlfriend, y’know.”
  • “Sure, yeah, sure.”
  • “I’m dating Rosario Dawson. We have SEX.”
  • “Cool!”
  • And so on.
  • Was Biden there?
  • I know NCIS is on tonight, so maybe he didn’t show up.
  • Grandpas love NCIS.
  • That Mark Harmon doesn’t take any shit from the youngsters, first of all.
  • There’s a new girl with big tits every couple seasons, second.
  • You get a good car chase every once in a while, third.
  • GRANDPAS LOVE NCIS.
  • In conclusion, the Democratic Debate is a land of contrasts.

And The Guitarist’s Name Is Snowy White

July 30, 2019 / / 10 Comments

Apparently, this version only appeared on the 8-track; I’ve been listening to Animals in various media for 25 years and I’ve never heard this before. Also: Animals is the best Pink Floyd album, and I’ll brook no insolence from any of you on this. Second-best is Dark Side. Do not befoul my Comment Section with your Ummagumma blather. Just accept that I am right with dignity and quiet gratitude.

OR

Battersea Power Station has to be the most famous power plant in the world, right? Is there even a list, or is the iconic brick building sui generis? Are we counting Chernobyl? I would argue that the event that is now referred to as “Chernobyl” is well-known, but not the actual building.

OR

The technology existed in 1977 to fake the image, but Pink Floyd was a big-time rockyroll act, and were therefore allowed to do whatever they hell they wanted, so a giant inflatable pig was created, filled with helium, and tethered to the south tower, where it remained for a good three or four minutes before floating directly into the flight path of Heathrow Airport. I am not making that up.

OR

When I mentioned 8 -track cassettes, every Enthusiast of a certain age heard the kuh-CHACK of the tape reversing in the dashboard of their mom’s Vega.

Pigpen On The Wing

July 30, 2019 / / 1 Comment

“There’s a time for ev’rything, but that don’t mean ev’rything happens at the right time. You follow?”

Yeah.

“Birthdays come ’round real regular. Baseball season, I guess. Rest o’ life doesn’t announce itself.”

You okay, buddy?

“The ol’ Pig is in some damn dramatic lighting!”

I can tell.

“Makin’ me all meaningful like I got oracles in my belfry!”

You were very good at it.

“The ol’ Pig’s good at lots of stuff.”

Like what?

“Drinkin’!”

Sure.

“Havin’ the blues!”

Yes.

“Pullin’ my motorcycle off to the side of the road when I see a fox, and givin’ her my rap!”

Also correct.

“It’s a good life, if ya don’t weaken.”

You always tell the truth, Pig.

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